Repost -- Help -- your thoughts on upgrading to 6.5 and moving to new servers

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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Sorry for the repost but no one replied to the previous post. I’m just hoping to get some feedback on this issue. Anyone?

Currently, we are running two Domino servers clustered (5.0.11) with 200 client (5.0.8) machines accessing these Domino servers throughout our network. We just purchased two new servers that will be replacing the current Domino servers. At the same time, I want to take this opportunity to upgrade to 6.5.1.

With all that being said, what would be the best approach to reach my goal: move to two new servers and upgrade to 6.5.1?

I will be adding these new servers with clean installs of 6.5.1 to the current Domino domain (which is running 5.0.11). Is this bad? How will this affect names.nsf since each server will be sharing the domino directory? Are there any steps that I need to undertake to avoid any troubles? Should I upgrade the old servers to 6.5.1 before adding the new servers to the domain?

Another hurdle to overcome stems from the fact that we can’t just move 200 users to the new servers within one weekend. This means that the old environment will have to stay up and running until all the user’s clients have been upgraded and pointed to the new servers.

In turn, this means that some users will be hitting the old servers while some users will be hitting the new servers. I’m thinking (since we only have 200 mail files) that I will just set up replicas on the new environment and replicate mail. This way we can take our time when upgrading and moving clients. Does this sound legitimate?

Once all the users have been moved to the new servers, I’m planning on just removing/uninstalling Domino from the old servers leaving just the new which will be running 6.5.1. What steps will need to be taken to insure the old servers no longer show in the Domino Directory? Is all this possible?

How am I wrong? What am I missing? What could be done differently/better?

As you can tell, I’ve only been doing this notes thing for a short time. Thanks for taking part in my education. :slight_smile:

(Note: I’ve downloaded and read most of the Upgrading to Lotus Notes and Domino 6 PDF)

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Subject: Repost – Help – your thoughts on upgrading to 6.5 and moving to new servers

Why can’t you move the 200 mail files to the new servers in one weekend? Using adminp, it should be handily done in that time.

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Subject: RE: Repost – Help – your thoughts on upgrading to 6.5 and moving to new servers

Moving the mail files isn’t the problem. Its upgrading the client machines. I don’t want to move them to the new server until they are running R6 client. Trying to keep things nice and neat. :slight_smile: Just a matter of personal preference really.

And… since our clients are spread out in different warehouses throughout the country, we can’t do them all in one weekend.

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Subject: some thoughts

There’s no problems with adding an ND6.5.1 server to an R5 domain and upgrade the design of your address book, as you can have an ND6 design on an R5 Domino Directory. Maybe you can add the new servers to the existing cluster, replicate all data, and move the users to the new home/mailservers as you progress. Once the old servers are no longer used, first take them out of the cluster, and finally delete the server documents after all’s done.

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Subject: RE: some thoughts

Thanks for the feedback. I had not considered actually adding the new R6 servers to the R5 cluster. The only thing I would need to do is upgrade names.nsf. Interesting…